Tradesmen give hardpressed family a Christmas present

Front row, Daniel, Mélissa, their mother Suzanne Denis and sister Sara have a freshly renovated home thanks to the crew recruited by Kevin Williamson, middle, who volunteered their time and money to renovate Denis' Orléans house Saturday. (Darren Brown/Ottawa Sun)

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Suzanne Daleman is a single mother of three, living in Orléans, where she operates a home-based daycare centre – Suzi’s Learning Centre.

Being a single parent is challenging enough. Being a small business owner is challenging enough. For Daleman, though, the challenges don’t stop there.

Two of her children have Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy, an eye disease that causes acute vision loss. Leber’s normally attacks young men in their early 20s but for Daleman’s children the disease came early – her son, Daniel, was diagnosed at the age of four – and in unexpected ways – her daughter, Melissa, also has the disease.

(Daleman’s youngest child, Sara, does not have Leber’s) Our second protagonist is Kevin Williamson, a service representative with Richcraft Homes, who has seven children of his own, and used to have a drinking problem.

Actually, that’s being charitable. Williamson was a bad-assed drunk – “a prick” – who kicked his addiction by going to Meadow Creek Treatment Centre at the Royal Ottawa Hospital and then rebuilding his life.

So these are our players. And this is what happened when Kevin met Suzanne, two weeks before Christmas.

It started at playgroup at St. Peter’s High School in Orléans. It was there that Kevin Williamson’s wife, Lise, met Suzanne Daleman.

“My wife came home and told me about this woman she had just met at playgroup,” remembers Williamson. “She couldn’t stop talking about her.” Williamson listened, almost in disbelief, as he was told about Dalemen and how she has raised her children to be active members of the community. How her son skies and her daughters volunteer at their school.

He listened to how Daleman refused to buckle from the burdens life had given her, instead getting up at five every morning to train for marathon runs, canvassing for St. Vincent de Paul every Christmas, raising money for what she had told Lise were “the less fortunate.” And sometime during that conversation at St. Peter’s the two women started talking about their homes, and Christmas, and getting their homes ready for Christmas, and it was then that Daleman mentioned she had hardwood flooring she was hoping to lay one day -- had in fact already purchased the flooring, and was now close to having the money to pay for the actual work.

Kevin Williamson listened and when his wife finished talking he asked:

“Did you happen to get a phone number for her?”

Daleman remembers the first phone call as something “strange,” something she did not understand.

“Here was this man I had never met, phoning and offering to help put down my hardwood flooring,” she says.

And yet there was something about the man’s voice, something about his manner, that made her trust him. It was as though – she couldn’t quite explain it, and this was strange too – it was as though, somehow, this was important to him.

She agreed to meet him and that Sunday Williamson came to Daleman’s home, bringing two other men with him.

Daleman’s house is in Fallingbrook, it was built 25 years ago, and as Williamson tells it: “everything in the house was 25 years old. Nothing had been replaced. It was getting really run down.” The men walked through the kitchen, the living room, the children’s bedrooms and sometime during the visit it occurred to Daleman they were looking at a lot more than the small main-floor room where she had wanted to lay hardwood flooring – a lot more -- although she didn’t have much time to think about it.

The men were asking too many questions. Jotting down too many notes.

At the end of the house tour Williamson said he would get back in touch. Daleman waved goodbye, wondering what had just happened.

The two other men with Williamson that day were Mike O’Connor, from Potvin construction, and Ivan Ting, one of the city’s best tile installers, and what was happening was the beginning of what has now become one of my favourite Christmas stories.

That very afternoon the men came up with a plan. Forget the hardwood flooring. That whole house needed work.

They only had five days to pull it off. Five work days, in fact, which meant they needed to make arrangements early in the morning, during their lunch breaks, after they put their kids to bed.

But that Friday morning the three men, along with Williamson’s brother-in-law, Terry Connolly, had line up the following:

Westboro Carpet and Flooring donated laminate flooring for all the bedrooms.

The Paint Centre in Rockland donated paint for the entire house.

Potvin Construction donated wood trim and a kitchen countertop.

Rona sold them material at cost.

Home Depot sold them material at cost.

Athens Rugs donated carpets.

John Mesquita bought the ceramic tiles.

Other tradesmen made cash donations and a new hot water tank and furnace were purchased.

The men also made calls and rounded up 15 tradesmen to help with the work, men who, when asked if they could help, had asked only one question:

“What time would you like us there?”

We’ll tell the next part of the story the way Suzanne Daleman experienced it.

She received a phone call from Kevin Williamson on Friday morning. She was told to pack some bags. The family needed to be out of the house for the weekend.

Williamson told her to go to the Courtyard Marriott in Orleans. Don’t worry about the cost. The hotel would be covering her stay.

When they arrived, the Daleman family was checked into the largest room in the hotel. Two large bedrooms. A sitting area.

There was a pool, where the family swam for hours. And a restaurant, where someone else made the meals and there were no dishes to clean, or errands to run afterwards.

“Suddenly, there were no problems for me to solve,” remembers Daleman. “It was just a magical weekend. Nothing to do but relax and spend time together as a family.” On Sunday afternoon Daleman received a phone call from Williamson, telling her she should come home. A new home, and 20 sleep-deprived tradesmen, were waiting for her.

This Christmas, Daniel, Melissa and Sara Daleman have new bedrooms. There is fresh paint, gleaming wooden floors and wainscoting on the walls. Suzanne Daleman also has a new bedroom. Along with an en suite bathroom.

The kitchen has been completely remodeled, with new countertops, sink and flooring. The playroom has an ash hardwood floor, perhaps one of the most beautiful floors in the city.

All the trim has been replaced. All the wallpaper removed. There is a new hot water tank and furnace.

“I will never be able to thank Kevin for what he has done,” says Daleman, her voice cracking as she speaks. “I am so proud of my home now.

“You should see my children’s bedrooms. They. Are. Perfect.”

“So why did you do it, Kevin?” It’s four days before Christmas and I’m speaking to Kevin Williamson, a man with a blended family, seven children in total, ages one to 18, and I’m asking the only question I have left.

Why, with everything on your plate – seven children brother -- why in the world did you spend so much time helping a complete stranger?

Williamson takes his time answering. He has become a thoughtful man in his middle years, quite different, he is quick to tell me, from the man he was in his drinking years.

He doesn’t miss those years much. Some people, after it’s over, will look back and say parts of it were fun, will treat the craziness with nostalgia, but not him. He doesn’t miss a single moment.

And he guesses that might be part of it. A recovering alcoholic making amends. The whole step thing, although he never practiced that stuff much. You move on. You rebuild. What’s left to say?

“I certainly feel like I’ve wasted time in my life,” he told me earlier in the week. “I don’t want to waste anymore.” So, productivity is in play. You just have to look at Suzanne Daleman’s house to see that.

But there is something more. Something Suzanne Daleman detected in his voice that first time he called.

Why was this so important to you Kevin?

Finally, he says:

“That old saying about a man with no shoes feeling sorry for himself until he met a man with no feet; the older I get the more that makes sense to me. It’s brilliant. It’s how you should lead you life.” Anyway, a little story for you. About what happened earlier this month, when Kevin met Suzanne.